


Life Hereafter

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 10 moments in falling in love, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 19:05:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19183846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: After fifth year, Harry and Luna grow closer and fall in love. 10 moments of their life. For TalconHiro





	Life Hereafter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talconhiro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talconhiro/gifts).



> Filling in a 10 moments of fluff request on tumblr for my dear friend talcon :) Enjoy!

**1 - life in letters**

 

The first day of summer, after Sirius dies, Aunt Petunia storms up to his door and grits out, “One of _your_ kind is here. Tell them to go _away!_ ”

Hope surges in Harry’s chest. He imagines the Weasleys coming to take him to the Burrow or maybe Remus. Instead, when he rushes outside, he sees Luna and her father.

Luna wiggles her fingers at him. “Hello Harry. I’ve come to give you my letter for the summer.”

“Oh.” Harry pauses, fingers twitching as if to snatch the letter away or throw his arms around her in a hug. “I, um, it’s nice to meet you Mr. Lovegood. Good to see you, Luna,” he adds though the word ‘good’ barely captures the surge of overwhelming warmth he feels at seeing one of his friends _here_ in person.

“Big fan of your work! And your contributions to the Quibbler,” Mr. Lovegood winks. “Luna was quite insistent that I side-apparate her over here to hand-deliver her letter. Never know if some strange creature might steal the letter away.”

“No, you don’t,” Harry hides his laugh behind his hand, thinking of Dobby.

He takes in Luna’s dress, with hundreds of little sewn pink seashells on it, her Butterbeer cap necklace and dangling earrings, and realizes he could never dream this up. She’s here. She’s real.

With a cough, he lowers his head and murmurs, “You… um… you didn’t have to come…”

“Oh but then how would I be able to see your reactions when you read my letter? Or get a reply right away?”

Harry can’t help it. He reaches for the hand holding his letter, a letter sealed in an emerald green envelope with pink seashells painted on it, and says, “That makes perfect sense.”

It really does, when it comes from Luna.

(She comes back every day with new letters, ignoring the Dursleys with style.)

 

**2 - life in day trips**

 

“Luna lives nearby?” Harry nearly drops his spoon in his porridge when Ginny brings it up. It’s been two days since Dumbledore took him to see Slughorn. He’d sent Hedwig with a letter to Luna, informing her that he wouldn’t be at the Dursleys for the rest of the summer. She sent back a painting of an otter.

“Yup,” Ginny nods. “I go over for sleepovers sometimes. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Harry smiles.

That afternoon has Harry marching up to Luna’s house and knocking on her door (while Tonks follows behind as his guard).

“Hi,” Harry grins, when Luna opens the door. “Do you want to go hunt for those nargles you were telling me about?”

Luna beams back at him. “You’re a bit late, but I suppose so. Yes. That would be lovely. Let me just fetch us some snacks.”

They spend the rest of the summer making friends with grouchy gnomes, trying to feed fairies, and figuring out where in the field nargles could be snooping.

 

**3 - life in train rides**

 

“...It’s true, you know,” Harry whispers to her, after Romilda Vane leaves their compartment and Neville slips into a nap. “You’re cool. I think you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met.”

Luna leans her shoulder against his. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

“If it means, ‘kind, neat, and utterly brilliant,’ then yes it does.”

They lean over a book about merpeople together for the rest of the train ride, shoulders pressed together. Harry doesn’t think about Voldemort or Death Eaters or Malfoy even once.

 

**4 - life in studies**

 

Harry flees the library when yet another Ron and Hermione spat breaks out. His quills fall out of his bag, like a little trail a thief leaves behind, when he nearly crashes into Luna.

“Luna!” he flushes, trying to gather his fallen parchment and quills in his hands. “I, uh, how are you?”

“Harry!” she pokes him with one of his fallen quills, “Are you running away from nipping nylils?”

“What are those?” Harry wracks his memories, trying to remember if Luna mentioned them before.

“They follow lovestruck souls. Hogwarts has been full of them lately. Especially around Romilda Vane. Oh, and your friends.”

Harry nods. “Should have known…”

“They were in this issue of the Quibbler.”

“Haven’t had time to read it since Snape started teaching DADA,” Harry frowns. He’d been meaning to read it soon, around his free periods. Those periods are never free. Only studying. Eternally. “But I will! Come Christmas Holidays, I swear. And we can go and make the corridors Wrackspurt proof again. Doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

“Oh!! I’d love to!” Luna’s smile goes so wide, Harry feels like he catches a bit of that smile too. “And take your time reading through the Quibbler, I look forward to hearing your opinions! Are you late for something, by the way? You seem to be in a bit of a rush.”

“Ah, well, those nylils around Ron and Hermione were making me a bit uncomfortable so I was trying to find a different place to study…” or slack off.

“Let’s study together then! Ravenclaw tower has a lovely sitting room and I’m sure no one will mind.”

“Definitely!” Harry grins.

“Come on then,” Luna takes his hand.

When the Ravenclaws stare blatantly at Harry and Luna’s intertwined fingers, Harry only holds on tighter.

 

**5 - life in dances**

 

The question comes out as naturally as breathing. Seeing Luna comfort Hermione, Harry just has to ask, “Would you like to come to Slughorn’s party with me?” He doesn’t say, ‘as friends,’ or ‘as a date.’ He just wants it to be them. Harry and Luna.

He doesn’t need to explain anything.

Luna only throws her arms around him and says, “Yes! I might get to meet some vampires! I hear Slughorn is inviting them!” and Harry knows they’ll be just them.

They’re just them as Luna swirls in her ethereal silver robes and attempts to figure out what different blood types taste like from Sanguini the vampire. They’re just them when Harry takes out his own pair of green spectrespecs to wear over his glasses to avoid talking to Slughorn and laugh with Luna. They’re just them as they sway to the music, hands on each other’s shoulders, completely off rhythm and spinning like there’s no tomorrow and Harry thinks--

_Oh. I think I might love her._

 

**6 - life in nylils**

 

Being in love with Luna is so very different from a crush. When he was attracted to Cho, he didn’t truly know her or try to treasure her as an individual. He was so distracted by how beautiful Cho was to care about how she felt, especially after Cedric died. But with Luna, everything is as easy as breathing and as hard as swallowing knives.

They still study together and joke around, they talk about nargles and wrackspurts and the wonders of flying, they feed thestrals together, they look at the stars in the astronomy tower, they discuss the strangeness of Ron and Hermione, they just exist together and Harry wouldn’t change a thing. But she smiles and he wants to hold her, wants to lie on her shoulder and never wake up, wants to stroke her cheek and lean in and--

It’s the nylils, they’ve got him, and he’s not sure if he wants them to go away.

 

**7 - life in drama**

 

He can’t love her. Not when he’s this messed up, when he has to kill Voldemort, when Snape just killed Dumbledore, when he has so many horcruxes to find. He could never ask her to wait for him. Never.

He stands at Kings Cross, staring at her, trying to memorize her face. He doesn’t know how he’ll survive without her letters, without her knowledge of new creatures, without her encouraging him to try drawing. He doesn’t--

“Harry,” she just smiles up at him. She puts her hands on his ears, as if to block out the noise in his head, and brings his head down so their foreheads touch. “I’m coming with you. On whatever journey you have to defeat him, I’m coming with you.”

“What?” Harry nearly steps back, “But--”

“You’ll need someone to wave away the nylils around Ron and Hermione,” Luna muses, “and I’m rather good at healing spells.”

He wants to say no. He wants to protect her. But since when has Harry ever decided what Luna will do? No, he’s always followed her flow, caught up in her current.

“Alright,” he says in relief.

 

**8 - life in tension**

 

“Don’t say that about her!” Harry shouts, when Ron says something nasty to Luna during his shift with the locket.

“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it? She’s just Loony, she’s slowing us down, she’s--”

“She’s the _kindest_ person that I’ve ever met. She’s easy to talk to and she _understands._ ” He can’t articulate just _what_ Luna understands, but he knows that she just _does_. “She might be strange to you but at least she says what she thinks and she’s sincere. You’re just… _stuck up!_ ”

Harry whirls around, taking Luna’s hand, and takes her outside the tent, leaving Hermione to shout at Ron. He can’t breathe, can’t stop his fingers from trembling. But that’s not important, Luna is--

“You didn’t have to say that. He didn’t mean it. It’s the howling husk in the locket.”

“Something deep down inside him meant it, and it _hurt_ you. Of course, I had to tell him off.”

Luna says nothing.

Slowly, Harry turns towards her. Her bangs hide her eyes. For a minute, she looks far away, in a place Harry can’t reach.

“...I was right, wasn’t I? He… he hurt you…”

She only lowers her head more. “Not much.”

Harry wishes he knew the incantations to stop tears. “It’s okay to be hurt,” he says the things he wish he could have heard when Cedric and Sirius died, “it’s okay to feel hurt by what he said. It wasn’t okay and you have feelings. You’re allowed to feel hurt, just for a moment.”

Luna leans in and sets her forehead against his shoulder. Quietly, Harry puts his arms around her.

“...Thank you,” she whispers.

 

**9 - life in beginnings**

 

 _I’m alive._ That’s what Harry thinks the moment Voldemort dies, the moments Hogwarts is free. _I’m alive._

The next few moments move in a haze. He’s mobbed by cheering and crying students, by professors and aurors alike. They all want to touch their savior, the boy-who-conquered, the-boy-who-lived. But Harry’s never thought of what that ‘boy-who-lived’ title meant.

He’s always survived.

But living? How does he do that?

Living is playing chess with Ron, eating dinner with the Weasleys, holding Hermione when she cries, listing to Hermione’s rants on house elf rights. Living is flying on a broom, having tea with Hagrid, petting Hedwig. Living is hand-delivered letters from Luna, exploring the same patch of grass every day for nargles, reading conspiracy theories together, dancing together, crying together, being together, it’s…!

He’s not sure how he ends up here, staring up at Dumbledore’s portrait, and finally alone with her.

“I knew I’d find you here,” she says.

She always finds him.

“I love you,” he says, because if he holds it in any longer, his corpse will be decimated by those nylils.

“That’s good." She nods, as if this is as true as blue skies, (and perhaps it is) "Because I love you too.”

 _What now,_ Harry thinks, because he's not sure how to be in a relationship. But with Luna, he'll try.

She opens her hand, and he locks his with hers.

 

**10 - life**

 

He takes her name. Harry Lovegood. Because he’s hers and she taught him to live and love well.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Always happy to get prompts at my [twitter](https://twitter.com/youlightthesky1), my [writing tumblr](http://youlighttheskyfanfiction.tumblr.com/), or my [art tumblr](https://youlighttheskyart.tumblr.com/)


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